Crypto Tycoon Pours $2.5M Into Nevada AG Race Against Foe

Jeffrey Berns has poured at least $2.5 million into a Nevada political action committee since 2023, more than twice the cash that committee’s candidate has raised from his entire individual donor base. The candidate, State Treasurer Zach Conine, is running for attorney general against the woman who five years ago helped bury Berns’s plan for a private blockchain city in the Reno desert.

The Democratic primary on June 9 has come down to a long-running personal feud. State Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro is the lawmaker who shelved Berns’s “smart city” plan in 2021. Berns, founder of the crypto firm Blockchains, has become the dominant funder of her opponent Conine’s run for attorney general.

Berns has not joined Fairshake, the national crypto super PAC sitting on roughly $193 million for the 2026 cycle. He’s gone local instead, dropping seven figures into one state race. Nevada is now a small but vivid case study of what crypto influence looks like when one donor focuses on one ballot.

The $2.5 Million Wedge in a Down-Ballot Race

Berns’s giving runs through a PAC controlled by Conine. Conine then routed more than $1.8 million from that PAC into a newly minted outfit called Safe and Strong Nevada, which has launched a website and a video ad attacking Cannizzaro by name.

Conine’s personal campaign account took in $1.2 million from individual donors over the same window. The math puts Berns alone above every other source of money behind Conine’s run. Cannizzaro, by comparison, has raised about $2.2 million between her personal account and a PAC she controls since the start of 2024, according to Ballotpedia’s 2026 Nevada attorney general race tracker.

Kenneth Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, called the spending unusual for the timing. “Meaningful money, especially at this early stage in the primary,” he said. “And we don’t know if this only represents an initial investment and will be followed up by more.”

Miller put the dynamic in a wider frame. “It is not typical for a campaign to be almost entirely propped up by one wealthy megadonor, but it does happen sometimes,” he said.

The cash trail in numbers:

• $2.5 million plus from Berns to a PAC controlled by Conine since 2023.
• $1.8 million plus moved from the Conine PAC to Safe and Strong Nevada PAC.
• $1.2 million raised by Conine’s personal campaign account from individual donors over the same period.
• $2.2 million raised by Cannizzaro across her account and PAC since the start of 2024.

Where Berns Got the Money to Spend

Berns made his first fortune as a California plaintiff’s lawyer winning settlements against the banking industry. He multiplied it by buying Ether early. The proceeds bankrolled an unusually visible lifestyle, including a Lake Tahoe lakefront compound that The Real Deal’s 2024 sale report documented at $47.5 million.

His Caribbean property has an extra crypto twist. According to Robb Report’s listing breakdown of the Turtle Tail estate, the $35 million Turks and Caicos compound appeared in seasons 2 and 3 of the Netflix dating show Too Hot to Handle and is one of only two homes in the islands accepting payment in cryptocurrency.

None of that wealth has made him a household name in crypto politics. The biggest crypto firms route their political money through Fairshake. Berns has stayed off that ledger entirely.

How Cannizzaro Killed Painted Rock

In 2018, Berns’s company Blockchains paid roughly $170 million for 67,000 acres in Storey County, near the Tesla Gigafactory east of Reno. The plan was a 36,000-resident town called Painted Rock that would run on blockchain governance and operate semi-autonomously from the surrounding county. Schools, taxes, law enforcement, water rights. Berns wanted his company’s appointed board to control all of it.

“I want to create a place where we can rethink things,” Berns told the BBC during the original lobbying push. “Where we can democratize democracy.”

He had a powerful patron. Then-Governor Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, endorsed the concept in his 2021 State of the State speech. Critics inside both parties saw an end-run around regular government and warned about siphoned tax revenue and water rights, which would have required pulling supplies from a 100-mile pipeline by some accounts.

The bill needed legislative approval. Cannizzaro, the state’s first female Senate majority leader, told the governor’s staff and the bill’s backers there was no path to a vote. A lobbyist active in the talks confirmed she was instrumental in shelving the proposal. Her campaign offered the same account.

“Like nearly all of her legislative colleagues in both parties, Majority Leader Cannizzaro was extremely skeptical of the idea of letting private corporations run their own governments and siphon off millions of taxpayers’ dollars,” said Peter Koltak, a campaign spokesperson.

The legislature parked the proposal in an interim study committee, the slow death common to Nevada politics. Berns’s company eventually pulled out of the study process. Storey County itself had already passed a resolution opposing the carve-out before the bill ever reached a hearing.

A Donor Who Skipped the Industry Playbook

The crypto sector’s preferred 2026 vehicle is Fairshake, which holds nine-figure sums for federal races. Coinbase has committed roughly $25 million to the new cycle on top of the $75 million it gave the PAC’s prior efforts, according to OpenSecrets’ Fairshake PAC profile. Andreessen Horowitz pledged another $23 million. Ripple has put in about $50 million across cycles. None of that money came from Berns, per the Fairshake committee record at FEC.gov.

Berns has poured into Nevada instead. He has given to candidates of both parties, including $5,000 to Republican Governor Joseph Lombardo in 2024 and $250,000 to the Washoe County Democratic Party in 2022. He even gave Cannizzaro herself $5,000 in 2020, before the smart-city fight broke open.

What Conine Has Said About Crypto

Conine has not made digital assets a centerpiece of his attorney general bid. His record while serving as state treasurer, summarized on his Nevada State Treasurer office biography, includes a public push to let government agencies accept stablecoin payments alongside credit cards and bank transfers.

“We want companies to know that Nevada is open for business, to try and attract businesses that do this kind of thing to try it here,” Conine said while pitching the stablecoin idea during the 2021 legislative session. He attended a crypto industry trade group event in 2024.

Cannizzaro’s camp says her opposition to private corporate governance was the driver in 2021 and remains the dividing line now. “Leader Cannizzaro has always defended Nevada from big corporations and wealthy special interests, and an unaccountable tech billionaire dumping his millions into this race is certainly not going to stop her,” Koltak said.

Whether Berns adds another tranche before the June 9 vote will likely decide whether Safe and Strong Nevada PAC keeps its airwaves dominance through the final stretch. The donor who lost his blockchain city in 2021 has, for now, more money in this primary than the candidate aiming to lead the office that polices Nevada’s corporate conduct laws.

Voters in the Democratic primary will have the next word on June 9.